=john-pecko

Upon landing in the Istanbul Ataturk Airport, I quickly realized I'll be in for an amazing day tomorrow. The weather forecast announced rain, and the air temperature was around 20 degrees Centigrade, which is pretty warm. At that moment I remembered all the bombastic announcements Olympus made about the E-3 digital SLR, with it being totally weather-proof and sturdy like the old E-1. And I hoped for a day such as tomorrow seemed to be, an ideal setting for a pleasant autumn shower I could run about in without worrying about an umbrella or getting a cold. Since I love the rain, I don't mind getting wet, and the ambient temperature was something I could easily cope with in dripping wet clothes and a messed up hairdo. As I set the time on my cell phone to GMT+2 and picked up my bags at the baggage claim conveyor belt, I smiled to myself awaiting the beauties of rain photography that would follow tomorrow. The people from Olympus predicted the showers, and packed a nylon raincoat in our camera bags, which came in handy later during the urban photo safari I was there to take part in...

Yep, it was my first time in Istanbul, the only town in the world that stretches across two continents, and it was packed with action, photography and very original forms of sightseeing from the perspective of a photographer in search for something different than meets the naked eye. We were given different photo assignments and were tutored by professional photographers at each of the three "safari stations" dispersed throughout the immense city of Istanbul.

The city has over 16 million inhabitants (some sources state that, during workdays, the city holds over 20 million people!), and bridges the Bosporus via two amazing, huge bridges. It's a city of contrasts, an Islamic metropolis with very non-conservative Muslims, women that aren't obliged to cover their heads and even young girls that run around in very provocative clothes, with almost western-like liberalism when it comes to sexual emancipation. Men holding hands are a normal sight too, and the clash of cultures you can observe on the streets of Istanbul truly justifies its description as the "Bridge between the East and the West".

But its eastern heritage is, more sadly than happily, still visible in the somewhat unsafe streets. Policemen standing on every corner, often armed with machine guns, police patrol cars in every street, and even machine gun nests on important military buildings - these normal sights of Istanbul were even more amplified by the presence of Condoleezza Rice from the US Government, who was in Istanbul at the same time we were.

But all the colorful sights of Istanbul made it even more appealing to a western photographer's eye, and the Turkish capitol made a perfect setting for a day filled with photography action. After the first evening, we were all pretty excited about tomorrow, when we would each receive the Olympus E-3 DSLR and set off into the heart of Istanbul on our photo safari. My own little secret excitement included the fact most of the other colleagues were hoping to avoid - the rain…

And my wishes from the day before came trough, with heavy rain pouring most of the morning. During the day, I extensively rain-tested the Olympus E-3, the latest flagship from the Olympus' SLR E-system, packed with amazing features and weatherproof magnesium alloy body and lenses. And the entire experience was phenomenal. I've never before found myself in a situation where I could carry a camera around my neck for an entire day, absolutely care-free about dust, moisture or bumping into something with the apparatus. While most of my colleagues in the photo safari team tried to hide themselves from rain, I ran through the soaking wet streets of Istanbul and had fun like a child, trying to capture fleeing people, their reflections on the street and getting to know how the camera operates under such conditions. I was protected by the nylon raincoat, but was still dripping wet at certain points during the day. Although the camera was drenched, it worked flawlessly and produced some amazing rain exposures, and I was - although frowned upon by some of my peers as being a total lunatic - extremely happy about the wet and cloudy weather.

The first assignment of the photo safari was at the Istanbul Grand Bazar in the old City. It's one of the largest markets with covered ceilings in the world, and has over 50 little streets, several thousands of shops and a quarter of million visitors daily! It's very easy to get lost in there!
Our assignment consisted of a running photo-shoot through the Bazar, and a photo-seminar on lighting with external flashes in an old carpet store. The owner of the store sat down in a warmly lit room full of carpets and smoked a Shisha pipe, and our job was to flash the scene with an FL-50R external flash hidden behind some carpets, using 2nd curtain synchronization, just in order to bring out the smoke of the Shisa pipe without disrupting the ambient colors in the room. The E-3 controls the FL-50R using the camera's built-in radio transmitter, and the flash can be entirely controlled via the camera's LCD, which was amazing. I'll write more about that in one of the comments when I upload one of the images from that assignment.

The second safari stop was at the Hagia Sophia, a former patriarchal basilica, later a mosque and now a museum. It's one of the most famous mosques in the entire world, famous for its massive dome that's taken as an example of architectural excellence in every art history book you can pick up. Up until 1520, it was the largest cathedral in the world, to be beaten in size only by the Seville Cathedral in the 16th century. Our task there was to take as many low-light, high-ISO image stabilized photos we could, experimenting with the built-in HDR engine of the Olympus E-3. I've made some exceptional handheld shots at ISO 800 using exposure times of only 1/10 or even 1/3 of a second (!!!), thanks to the amazing image stabilizer of the Olympus E-3! The Hagia Sophia is an amazing, beautiful and very dramatic setting for photography, but also very challenging in terms of lighting. I found this to be the most difficult task of the day in terms of making usable photos without a tripod.

The last assignment lead us across the Bosporus - we bridged the two continents via boat, sailing in the rain across the restless and wavy sea in the Bosporus Strait, venturing to a dock on the other side of the enormous city of Istanbul. During this 15 minute sail, we had a nice break, drinking mint tea and trying to keep the hot, sweet fluid inside the cups, as the waves were pretty high. As it turned out as a consequence, it was more difficult for some to keep the tea inside their stomachs.



As we pulled in to the small private dock, surrounded by a fence and gate, we found a setting for the most fun part of the day - a model shoot with a German photo model. Sasia was beautiful and very talented and was more than eager to pose for our group, and our photography tutor quickly explained different lighting techniques, continuous paparazzi-style motion shooting and then set up a wirelessly controlled softbox flash we used to create very dramatic black and white photographs. I'll upload those tomorrow morning, hopefully (I still don't have ADSL at home, and I don't have the photos here with me at work).

Between these assignments, we sometimes walked, we mostly ran and we took public transportation when it was too late to do anything else, experiencing the Turkish capitol from a very fun - although exhausting - perspective of a "professional photographer on the run". So I had quite a lot of sightseeing on the go, and was very pleased with the entire organization of the event.

It was a very fun and educational day, and the camera - although dripping wet - worked flawlessly. I shot around 5.5 GB of RAW data, and an additional 1 GB with my Canon during the evening before. Sadly, I forgot that E-3 was a pre-production sample, and there's no way I can process the RAW data at the moment, since there is no E-3 RAW plugin available for Photoshop, Lightroom or any other third party application. Only the Olympus Master can open the E-3 RAW files, and that application sucks. So, if you're interested in the photos, you'll have to wait two weeks until Olympus launches the official ORF plugin for the E-3. I do have some amazing model shots I took in RAW+JPEG, so I'll upload some of the JPEG counterparts during the next couple of days.

I hope you liked my little report, and the photos will follow during the next couple of days. Until then, take care and have fun!